Opinion | Is it wise to proceed with the Northern Metropolis and Lantau Tomorrow when Hong Kong’s population is set to decline?

The housing shortage is severe now and solutions are needed. But expensive projects that take over a decade to realise must be assessed against Hong Kong’s very low birth and immigration rates

Reading Time:3 minutes

Pedestrians cross a road in Hong Kong on December 7, 2021. Enduring assumptions about the city’s population growth are now moot. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 6:45am, 15 May 2022

In the manifesto released by Chief executive-elect John Lee Ka-chiu, a key item was the promise to fully review and plan for the Northern Metropolis and Lantau Tomorrow Vision. These two enormous projects have been proposed as solutions to Hong Kong’s severe and long-standing housing shortage.

There are few issues that can be considered a higher priority than accommodation, given the long waiting times for public housing and the hundreds of thousands that are still living in subdivided flats.

Lee should be praised for putting housing near the top of his agenda; however, one hopes that in his promise to review and plan for the two giant projects, the focus is on the word “review” rather than “plan”.

A closer look at the numbers related to these schemes reveals that “reconsider” may be even more appropriate because enduring assumptions about population growth are now moot.

When any large project is being planned for housing, the number at its core is the projected population that will live there. The proposed population for the Northern Metropolis site is 2.5 million.

And, from 700,000 to 1.1 million people are expected to take up residence in the Lantau Tomorrow scheme. Thus, the two projects combined could house at least three million people.